Addressing concerns of expense, taste, health and the growing need for certification, key speakers spoke of huge potential in a market that is steadily moving mainstream, while recognising the hurdles that must be overcome if market share is to be increased.

As one of the fastest growing sectors in grocery retail, key consumer trends for expansion were identified with areas of choice, branding, taste and convenience cited as ripe for improvement.

Peter Morrison, innovation and inspiration manager for Sainsbury's, revealing insights from consumer research, said: 'We need to take risks...to offer a delicious and inspiring organic range, to meet the needs and preferences of our customers.' Ian Merton, Sainsbury's food trading director, raised concerns of regionality and traceability. He said that the gap between conventional and organic agricultural practices is closing due to the adoption of longer crop rotation cycles, the use of fewer pesticides and efforts to increase traceability. 'We must ensure that organic produce continues to lead the way and become a benchmark for conventional agriculture,' said Merton. 'To continue to raise our standards to meet customer expectations we have introduced IFOAM [compliance], which will ensure that all our own label foods are certified to the same level wherever in the world they are produced.' The issue of certification proved central as Deirde Hutton, chairman of the National Consumer Council, echoed both the concerns of price and the need to develop robust farm assurance schemes, a strong self-regulatory arrangement and meaningful standards.

She also spoke of the need to develop a more varied approach to producing and marketing produce, with more choice required rather than just organic or conventional. She said: 'The success of the industry depends on its ability to meet the needs of consumers by producing safe, wholesome and accurately labelled food at a fair price.

'Consumers want a variety of farming methods to provide a range of food at different prices.' Peter Melchett, policy director for the Soil Association said: 'Certification must allow for consumer confidence in the integrity of the process. We must strive to improve standards within organic produce with particular concern to energy use, environmental impact and fairtrade issues.' Giving an unexpected reason to buy organic produce was Dr Paula Baillie-Hamilton, author of The Detox Diet, who spoke of the increased amount of ''chemical calories' in processed food, while Master Chef, Steven Saunders called for organic food to become the benchmark for quality. And Sainsbury's re-affirmed its commitment to UK producers as it revealed plans to decrease its organic imports to 40 per cent by 2004.

Topics